Continuing improvement in circuit design has lead to smaller and smaller integrated circuits used in electronic devices. This in turn affords the opportunity to combine electronic devices, such as a selective call receiver with a timepiece, to provide a very useful and highly desirable personalized electronic device.
Generally, selective call receivers, such as pagers, can display the caller identification number and the message received on an LCD (liquid crystal display) panel section, in addition to the generation of an alarm for indicating call reception.
A typical selective call receiver may be combined with an analog watch with hour, minute and second hands controlled by a pulsed stepping motor. The stepping motor is conventionally controlled by voltage pulses at regular intervals to increment the second and in turn the minute and hour hands and thereby cause the correct time to be displayed.
Combined electronic devices of this type are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,485 (the '485 patent) to Pace, assigned to the assignee of the present application, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,118 (the '118 patent) to Sakumoto, both of which are incorporated herein by reference and described briefly below.
The pager of the '485 patent is combined with an analog watch with hour, minute and second hands controlled by a stepping motor. Normally the stepping motor is activated by a voltage pulse applied at regular intervals, such as every one second. However, during channel monitoring, means are provided to inhibit any applied voltage pulses to the stepping motor to prevent desensitization of the pager receiver. At the same time, a seconds register is incremented and later utilizes the data processor to generate and apply the appropriate delayed voltage pulses to the stepping motor in a sequential but accelerated fashion so as to bring the timepiece to current time status.
The '118 patent discloses an electronic watch with pager. In one aspect, received and stored information signals are selected in response to an output signal of the external inputting means. The time signal outputted by the time measuring means and received information signals outputted by the received information storing means are selected by the display switching means. The outputs of the display switching means are inputted to the analog display means and the digital display means, respectively. In summary, the time or the caller identification number are selectively displayed on the analog display means. The time and the caller message are selectively displayed on the digital display means. In other aspects of the '118 patent, different inputs and outputs are selected and stored such that there are different types of displays of information.
A problem with conventional watch/pagers is that they display the messages on the face of the watch, beneath the hands. Therefore, the location of the hands can interfere with the reading of the display, which can result in misinterpretation of the display or prevent one from reading the display quickly at a glance. Furthermore, display size is limited, which limits the amount of information that can be displayed without scrolling.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a multiple display timepiece in which the message display can be read without interference from the hands of the timepiece. In addition, a multiple display timepiece is needed that provides a larger message display.